Gender-Based Household Compositional Changes and Implications for Poverty in South Africa Chijioke O
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Journal of International Women's Studies Volume 19 Issue 5 Gender, Poverty and Inequality: Exploration Article 6 from a Transformative Perspective May-2018 Gender-based Household Compositional Changes and Implications for Poverty in South Africa Chijioke O. Nwosu Catherine Ndinda Follow this and additional works at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws Part of the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Nwosu, Chijioke O. and Ndinda, Catherine (2018). Gender-based Household Compositional Changes and Implications for Poverty in South Africa. Journal of International Women's Studies, 19(5), 82-94. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol19/iss5/6 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. ©2018 Journal of International Women’s Studies. Gender-based Household Compositional Changes and Implications for Poverty in South Africa By Chijioke O. Nwosu1 and Catherine Ndinda2 Abstract Poverty is one of the most challenging socio-economic problems in South Africa. Though poverty rates have been substantially reduced in the post-apartheid period, many South Africans remain poor. Available evidence also indicates a substantial gender gradient to the prevalence of poverty in the country. A standard indicator of gendered power structures is the gender of the household head. We examine the effect of transitioning from a male- to a female-headed household over time (relative to remaining in a male-headed household) on changes in the probability of transitioning into poverty from a non-poor state over a two- to six-year period. This type of longitudinal analysis is largely lacking in South Africa, where most previous studies have largely focused on cross-sectional and repeated cross-sectional analyses. The results indicate that transitioning from a male- to female-headed household is associated with an increase in the probability of falling into poverty from a previous non-poor state. The results hold true across all poverty lines and also indicate that the effect of gender-based transitions is not significant in the short term (i.e. for the one-period transitions), but over more persistent transitions. Keywords: Household, poverty transitions, inequality, longitudinal survey, South Africa 1 Dr. Chijioke Nwosu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Economic Performance and Development (EPD) programme. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cape Town. Prior to joining the HSRC, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Economics, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University, Atlanta. In the course of his graduate education, he won a number of academic grants/scholarships including the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency Graduate Scholarship, the Carnegie Fellowship for Doctoral Study, and the African Economic Research Consortium Doctoral Thesis Grant. Dr Nwosu is a development economist. Specifically, his research interests are in the areas of health and labour market outcomes, health care financing in developing countries, and the relationship between gender and poverty in developing countries. He has published a number of peer-reviewed journal articles and working papers and has presented papers at numerous local and international academic conferences. [email protected] 2 Dr. Catherine Ndinda is a Chief Research Specialist in Economic Performance and Development unit of the Human Science Research Council, Pretoria, South Africa. She is an affiliate of Development Studies, University of South Africa (UNISA). She holds PhD in Social Science and MSc in Urban and Regional Planning (Development) both from Natal University. She has been a principal investigator in national and provincial studies on monitoring and evaluation in South Africa. In 2014 she was the principal investigator in the national study Baseline assessment for the future impact evaluation of informal settlements targeted for upgrading, which was also presented the UN Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador. She has collaborated in multi-country studies covering at least six African countries (Kenya, Malawi, Cameroun, Togo, Nigeria and South Africa). Her research focus is on policy analysis, monitoring and evaluation (design assessment, baseline assessments and impact evaluations), human settlements, gender studies. Her current research focus is on post-apartheid housing policy and practice. She is currently the principal investigator in a synthesis evaluation: An evaluation of interventions by the Department of Human Settlements in facilitating access to the city for poor households. She has published widely in the field of gender studies. Email: [email protected] 82 Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 19, No. 5 May 2018 Introduction Over a billion people live in extreme poverty globally and South Africa has its fair share of poor people. Indeed, poverty, along with high unemployment and nontrivial inequality, forms a tripartite socio-economic malaise plaguing South Africa. Though the prevalence of poverty has substantially declined over the post-apartheid period, many South Africans still live in extreme poverty. Also worrying is the fact that the poverty headcount – the proportion of the population living below a given poverty line – has actually increased in the last few years. For instance, data from Statistics South Africa indicates that the percentage of South Africans living in extreme poverty declined from 28.4% in 2006 to 21.4% in 2011, but increased to 25.2% in 2015. A similar trend obtains for poverty headcounts based on higher poverty lines (Statistics South Africa, 2017). A feature of global and South African poverty is that it is gendered. This implies that females and female-related socio-economic structures bear a significantly higher burden of poverty than their male counterparts. A number of studies in South Africa have shown that females are more likely to belong to poorer households than males (Posel & Rogan, 2012), and that female- headed households are more likely to be poor than their male-headed counterparts (Posel & Rogan, 2012; Rogan, 2013). The latter is especially worrying given the rise in the proportion of South African households headed by women (Madhavan & Schatz, 2007). Furthermore, it has been shown that (unearned) mothers’ income has a higher effect on the family’s health than income under fathers’ control (Thomas, 1990). Thus, it stands to reason that higher female poverty is likely to have serious ramifications for household welfare (especially with respect to health). Though the foregoing indicates that a number of studies have been conducted on the relationship between gender and poverty in South Africa, there is virtually no evidence on the implications of transitions into female headship (from a male-headed household) for transitions into poverty in South Africa. While previous studies (Ndinda & Ngandu, 2016) mostly focused on the cross-sectional relationship between belonging to a female-headed household and poverty at a given point in time, it is important to ascertain if individuals who were initially non-poor and who belonged to male-headed households stand the risk of being pulled into poverty if they become members of female-headed households. This is the major gap in the literature that this paper seeks to fill. Our results indicate that transitioning into a female-headed household is associated with an increased probability of transitioning into poverty. This significant relationship apparently does not occur spontaneously; it kicks in when the transition becomes more persistent. Further analysis exploiting the longitudinal nature of the data indicates that between the groups of individuals who would subsequently transition into female-headed households and those who would remain in male-headed households, there was no significant difference in the probability of being poor prior to the gender-related transitions. This strengthens the argument that at least part of the observed significant relationship between future transitions into female-headed households and transitions into poverty may be causal. Gender and Poverty in South Africa Poverty in South Africa cannot be comprehensively understood without a gender disaggregation of the poverty statistics. As early as 1954, South African women understood the gendered dimensions of poverty when they in the Women’s Charter noted that: We women share with our men folk the cares and anxieties imposed by poverty and its evils. As wives and mothers, it falls upon us to make small wages stretch a 83 Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 19, No. 5 May 2018 long way. It is we who feel the cries of our children when they are hungry and sick. It is our lot to keep and care for the homes that are too small, broken and dirty to be kept clean…We know the bitterness of children taken to lawless ways, of daughters becoming unmarried mothers whilst still at school, of boys and girls growing up without education, training or jobs at a living wage…These evils need not exist. They exist because the society in which we live is divided into poor and rich …. They exist because there are privileges for the few, discrimination and harsh treatment